Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (35 page)

I spoke slowly. “Could you let me know if he popped through again?”

“Last saw him on the mid-level northern, sir. While back.”

“We’ll keep an eye out,” Bazalgette assured me. He hesitated. “Will you be pursuing my little army? It will be deuced difficult to decide who is responsible for what.”

I sighed. “Mr Bazalgette, I have no wish to embarrass a cause as worthy as yours. My inspector is also averse to public embarrassment. Before I can give you any assurance, however, I’d like a chat with one of your little toshers.”

“I’ll arrange a rendezvous. I’d leave the uniform at home if you don’t want to frighten the chap witless. You’ll be wanting a copy of our map, I imagine.”

“Please. The Yard can pay the draughtsman’s costs.”

We stood for a moment looking out at the river. Gone was the debris I had spied from Waterloo Bridge two years before. The Thames splashed happily against its new embankment. I was alarmed to feel a rumble beneath my feet.

“Pneumatic train,” Bazalgette nodded. “Test stretch. Plan for all eventualities, I say. There’s so much shoddy work done these days, drives me potty. No wonder Pearson has the Fleet ditch bursting in every two seconds; nobody has the faintest idea what lies where. We’ve laid the water, gas and hydraulics into this thing ourselves.”

I blinked. “You’re not working with Roxton Coxhill, are you?”

“Ditched him. Bloody idiot.”

“But you know him?”

“One of those for whom life never quite matches up to Eton. I imagine his finest hour was torturing some fag over a spit in the dining hall. His engine burst the day they installed it and he wouldn’t take the rap. Must be off in two ticks, Sergeant. Anything else?”

I turned to him. “Good luck, sir. A monumental task you’ve taken on.”

“Pleasure to talk to someone who sees what I’m at.” He sipped his tea, enjoying the moment of calm. “A little vision, that’s what’s needed. Babylon, Knossos, Rome – they all had it. London could be the greatest city the world has ever seen. Of course, drains aren’t newsworthy, Sergeant. No glamour. But someone has to sort out the bloody mess. That fellow Skelton saw it.” He sighed. “Wife says I’m obsessed with faeces. Cloacal fixation, she calls it. I tell her I’m trying to save the country, damn it. Good day, Sergeant.”

With that the great engineer shook my hand and strode off along his bold new embankment to forge the greatest city in the world.

BAIT FOR A WORM

Miss Villiers took out a file, looking around to check we were unwatched. She looked exhausted. “Pshaw,” she said. “I’m fine. Behind on my college work, that’s all.”

I wondered if I was wasting her time with this code-breaking. If she failed her final examinations, her family struggles would have been in vain. She pressed the tips of her fingers into her forehead. Thinking she was on the verge of tears, I suddenly found myself telling all about Bazalgette and the sewers and the map.

“What am I to do?” I whispered. “There’s no escaping it. The thefts must have been carried out by Bazalgette’s toshers. Perhaps there was no coordinated plan. More likely opportunism. Word of mouth. Yet what did they take? Those who have nothing steal a pittance from those who have everything. Should they be transported for it?” I screwed up my eyes. “What if Worm’s lot are involved? Am I to cause their downfall?”

“Scare them off, then. Have a word with Worm. Better still, catch them at it.”

“Catch them? I never thought of that,” I said ironically.

“Why not?” She stuck out her chin. “You have the maps. We can pinpoint the stretches at risk. They only steal from the wealthy. So we post constables in the most eligible cellars and you’ll catch one soon enough. Offer him to Wardle on a platter. That should scare off the others. Better lose a soldier than the whole army be routed, don’t you think?”

I nodded glumly, picturing Worm and the Professor languishing in Cold Bath Fields. “Might get the poor blighters that Wardle nabbed for it off the hook as well.”

Ruth looked at me strangely. “You’re a good man, Campbell,” she said and locked her fingers with mine for a moment.

Bazalgette sent the map as promised, on which it was clear which stretches were at risk, and a note. One of the head toshers would meet me. Bazalgette had characterised me as an interested benefactor so as not to scare the timid fellow. Dressed for the part, I waited at Seven Dials for several hours one morning. The fellow never showed up. I did, however, spot Numpty shuffling along.

“Numpty! Long time, no see.”

He curled up into his coat, like a frightened hedgehog in the dusk.

“Come, come, Numpty, it’s me, Watchman. Listen, do you recall the night we met, at Euston Square? That old fellow, Shuffler. You didn’t know him, did you?”

As if reciting lines learnt by rote, Numpty denied it.

“Don’t panic, wee man. Ask Worm to pop in, will you? Haven’t seen him for ages.”

He nodded vigorously and, as Worm might have put it, scarpered.

I went directly to the Chief Superintendent to moot the notion of coordinating an operation in Wardle’s absence.

“There’s rumours of copycat thefts from our source, sir. Think I can nip it in the bud.”

“Wardle speaks highly of you, my boy.” The big man scratched his chin, while I wondered what Wardle had said of me. “How many constables do you want?”

I was assigned three giants with the unlikely names of Watkins, Atkins and Atkins (no relation), who seemed only too happy to regard me as their superior. They ran errands to Bazalgette’s office, for this seemed one task I could not entrust to the Worms. When it came to our plan, they were in no way discomfited at the prospect of a week’s vigil in the cellars of Shepherd’s Bush.

How many early birds do you need to catch the worm? The Professor brought Miss Villiers along to the Yard one evening, and I smuggled her in under the auspices of an interview about a theft. This minor deception was amply rewarded by the look of wonder on her face on entering the Yard. Perhaps I could have made my plan of action without her; but I had seen the library stack, and it seemed fair to show her our inner sanctum.

After a decent period of nosing around our office, she fell to studying Bazalgette’s sewer plans. “Think how much time must go into each of these lines, every twist and turn revised and double-checked, above ground and below, before they commit it to paper.”

It struck me that other plans were being forged with such detail. How much groundwork was going into Berwick’s new stratagems, whatever they might be? To what lengths would such a man go, once he decided to destroy his enemy?

The most recent thefts had exploited all three sewer lines north of the river. The low and high levels were both advancing through warrens of streets, affording an impossible guessing game. The mid level, by contrast, underpinned a wealthy mews along the Bayswater Road.

“You should plead your injury,” she said excitedly, as we put the final touches to our plan. “Stay in the office while the boys do the dirty work.”

I shook my head. “No, no. We need to cover as many houses as possible.”

She seemed suitably impressed. “Leading from the front.”

Samuel Smiles’ basement in Palmer Mews, Notting Hill Gate, stank. From a discreet but thorough search, I had discovered four houses on the street with grates large enough that a boy might enter. Miss Villiers cooked up stories for the owners about routine checks on underground rivers and Roman remains. Samuel Smiles, the sage of self-help so admired by Coxhill, was an overbearing little Border Scotsman with little interest in archaeological remains, unless there was coinage involved.

Watkins, Atkins and Atkins (no relation) were posted in equally plush houses with equally foul cellars.

These were the grimmest nights I had passed since my fever. I decreed candles impermissible. We must occupy the darkest corner, sweating away in gloves, galoshes and regulation greatcoats. Lavender posies for the stench were allowed, and beer in a wooden tankard. As I crouched in my corner, rheums surged afresh through my joints, the memory of fever ran in my veins. In the mornings I could hear the work in the sewer starting up, and I thought ruefully how we declined to visit Pearson’s cellar all that time ago. I thought shamefacedly of my three hulking charges huddled down the road, far from their families with little clue what they were achieving. I could not have been a general, sending men to their deaths. Indeed, Atkins (no relation) did contract an ailment over the following weeks, despite all our protective clothing. I never knew if it was in his cellar he caught it, but Simpson could not cure him, and I felt the dismal shame of robbing his little ones of their father.

By the fifth night of our vigil, the Saturday, I was shattered. Even if they did not strike, I would have to call a halt, for Wardle was due to return Monday, and I was already too tired to be of use to anyone.

Then I heard the grate rattle.

My eyes could barely pick out the movement. From the sounds, however, I could picture the latch being expertly lifted and the grate swung gently open. Light footsteps passed me and a figure ascended the stairs. I had been expecting a boy, planning to let him strike and seize him as he returned, for I had made sure there was no other way out. But this was a man.

He opened the cellar door and swung it to behind him. I waited in high anxiety. When I heard him above, I moved over to the grate, to make sure he would not escape me. In the darkness I was not as quiet as I would have wished. I had that puzzling feeling that somebody was there with me. Sure enough, when the cellar door was pulled open again, a boyish voice behind me whispered sharply, “Esilop, esilop!” and scarpered.

The man sped down the stairs towards me, bag of swag swinging freely. As he headed for the grate, I bundled him to the ground. He looked up at me with a pained smile, as if it was indescribably boorish of me to trouble him at his work.

“You got me,” he said without rancour. “No messing now. Let’s be on our way.”

Content that he would not flee, I reached for my lamp. When I saw him in the light, my blood ran cold. I knew that face. He was the drunken smiler from the Rose and Crown, and I knew now of whom he reminded me, the old fellow from the spout, Shuffler.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” he said cheerily. I had loosened my hold on his arm, and he swung his bag and gave me a thumping clonk on the head. I went flying, and he lost no time in scrabbling through the grate and away. I scrambled to my feet, but with my knee there was little chance of catching him. I stuck my head through to see him disappearing into the distance down the narrow passage. I called out in frustration. “Why the bones?”

The figure stopped a moment and his reply echoed down to me. “Ask Berwick.”

And he was gone.

I turned back to the cellar, clutching at my throbbing head. He had left the bag. It took only a moment to find what he had taken: a few coins, a silver candlestick and the workings of a clock.

Letter to Sgt Lawless, May 1862, Trieste, Italy:

How much I have enjoyed looking over these scribblings! What comfort my diary brought me through that mayhem of excitements, that maelstrom of disappointments! I shall never be a great writer like father, but perhaps one day I shall have copies printed and bound to circulate privately. This narrative, assembled from diaries spanning 1857-1860, I submit not for literary merit. Who can foretell the salient detail that will lead our gallant sergeant to the truth? What he seeks I know not, but I was pleased at eliciting Agnes’ confession that day. For the delay, I can only apologise, adducing as defence my elopement. Father upset me with a remark that day, that nursing policemen was a job not for the daughter of the house but for a maid. Though I said nothing, I bethought me of a comment Mr Skelton had made.

“Are we not all people in the end?” he said. “Take Hester and Miss Dickens. Swap their clothes, and many folk would be at a loss to say which is the lady.”

I took this properly to mean that people are ignorant and, in their ignorance, might not see me for the lady that I am. Father was upset, however. He has been touchy about the whole issue since his run-in with Thackeray at the Garrick.

I am glad that I nursed you, Sergeant, and I hope that these meagre notes may illuminate your investigation.

God bless,

Mrs Charles Collins, formerly Catherine Dickens (Kate!)

(
More for brevity than for fear of causing offence, I have seen fit to chop Miss Dickens’ narrative down to size, while attempting to retain the flavour of its naïve charm. RVL
)

EXCERPTS FROM A LADY’S DIARY

1857: The Amateur Drama

January. The first performance of The Frozen Deep, in The Smallest Theatre In The World, has drawn roaring applause from the servants, and, I am led to believe, tears. Father called us magnificent. Next stop, the Champs-Élysées!

February. We have been invited to mount The Frozen Deep at the Gallery of Illustration in Regent’s Street, by ROYAL COMMAND! Father attempts to pass it off as a trifle, but I know he is all a-flutter at the thought of performing for our dear Queen.

March. This, as the poet says, is the start of my woes. Despite the indignities I have suffered at the hands of the cruellest of directors (father), my role is to be stripped from me and handed to, of all things, a professional actress. Father defends this decision by pure snobbery: he will not have his daughters presented to the Queen of England in the guise of coarse actresses. He is allowed to be presented as he wishes, however, the two-faced old boot. I call it shameful. Ingratitude. Exploitation.